Tutorial 1/Class Exercise 1

First tutorial! I was late for 10 minutes or so, but I was glad I did not miss attendance taking. Lionel was guest speaking again, teaching us more techniques in taking photographs with the manipulation of exposure. This time he spoke about panning, a technique of having the subject be in focus, with the subject's surroundings being blur. It sounded so complicated and foreign, but basically it is about using a slower shutter speed, and moving your camera along with the subject to capture a shot full of movement and speed.

Jing proceeded to give us our first class exercise - to capture a panning shot by the end of class. I wandered around the school campus and finally decided to position myself at the first level of the ADM block and take pictures of moving people and vehicles.

I started out with a rather fast shutter speed, so the results were not very ideal because the subject's clarity hardly differed from the background. So I adjusted to a slower shutter speed (1/30)

The results were significantly better! A little more adjustments to the shutter speed and my hand movement, and I finally got what I wanted.

This is what I got at the end of the class. Yay!

Lecture 2

Lecture was more than fun because a guest speaker came to speak to us about manipulating the exposure of a camera to create optimal results in photo-taking. Our guest speaker was Lionel, and it was a little odd to see him speak to the entire class because he used to be my tutorial classmate when we took NM2208 together. Nonetheless, he carried himself well and spoke with a lot of confidence, like a true, professional photographer!

He spoke to us, mainly, about the Exposure Triangle. The Exposure Triangle comprised of 3 elements - ISO sensitivity, aperture and shutter speed, and each of the elements controls an aspect of the way a camera reacts to light. He also showed us photographs of varying degrees of exposure. He taught us the logic behind the aperture, shutter speed and ISO's number values, and how adjusting each one had different results. He also taught us how to balance between aperture and shutter speed to create shots of deep and shallow depths of field, motion blur and freeze action. And then he touched on how ISO determined how "grainy" our photos were going to turn out. All these were vital information, as they related to our first assignment of the module, which was capturing photographs of deep depth of field (DDOF), shallow depth of field (SDOF), motion blur and freeze action.

When the assignment was given out to us, I had a basic idea of what I wanted for the deep and shallow depth of field shots. Changi Airport was ideal for such shots; the architectural patterns and tessellation within the terminals would help enhance the "layering" within the photograph, making the foreground, mid-ground and background more distinct. Previous experiences of going to the airport and taking photographs taught me so. The tricky ones were the blur motion and freeze action shots. I had no experience in taking these shots, so I knew I would need more time to experiment with movement and camera possibilities.

First Contact

Stepping into this module, I thought I knew what it entailed. Thinking that it was a photography module, I was prepared to act the part of a professional photographer and snap artistic photos at free will. I was part of the Photography Society in my Junior College, but that committee never really taught me much photography skills. Either that, or it never retained in my memory. So I was all prepared to learn all the techniques I could to make me a better photographer. But it turns out the module was not about photography after all. It was more about digital imaging and its manipulation.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed that the module was not what I expected, but nonetheless I was eager to learn because before this, my Photoshop skills and other relevant computer software skills were very very limited. So I am more than happy, and looking forward to learning the skills required to excel in this module.

The first lecture did not touch much on the technical aspects of digital imaging. It was more like an introduction to the module, so Jing went through the assessment criteria and the workload that we would be expected to handle. The highlight of the lecture was definitely when Jing showed us various photos that won awards. It really altered my perception of what was defined as a "good photo". A visually blur photograph could win an international award based on the moment that it was capturing. It challenged my long-belief that "good photos" needed to, at least, be clear. Looks like I have much, much more to learn, after all.